Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to analyze and contrast two of the most important English novels of the 19th century – Emma by Jane Austen and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Written in the first half of the 19th century, these are iconic works, however, showing completely different sides of the English life of that time. Despite the difference in the settings of the novels, they are distinguished by the high psychologism of the narrative and the deep elaboration of the main characters around which the narrative is centered.
Jane Austen’s Emma
Austen usually draws characters of the aristocratic class, protected from the influence of an unstable social and economic environment. Heroes in Austen’s novels are more focused on their own emotions than social struggles. However, at the same time, the problem of social status may be decisive for the love affliction of some characters, which is the main theme of the novel. The main character, Emma, at the beginning of the novel presents a young, not quite mature consciousness, which, however, is full of confidence and spontaneity. Obviously possessing impressive inner energy and not knowing how to dispose of it, Emma decides that her vocation is to woo other people. Based on the false belief that she influenced the marriage of her governess, Miss Taylor, Emma decides to reproduce the successful experience.
In my opinion, Emma deserves sympathy precisely because she is an intricately written character with conflicting characteristics. Austen gives Emma a positive description, but the heroine’s actions do not always correspond to her. Emma openly interferes with the lives of other people, not knowing what destroys their happiness. However, if she were a strictly positive two-dimensional character, the reader would not have the opportunity to observe her psychological maturation. Therefore, Emma seems to be not only a well-written character but also a good person – she evolves by observing the results of her behavior and reflecting on it.
Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield
The social conditions in which the heroes of Dickens find themselves are often the extreme level of poverty, from which the main characters strive to rise and break free. The fascination of Dickens’s plots is additionally ensured by the fact that the reader observes the hardships of heroes who strive for completeness in an environment that bites them. David’s ascent up the social ladder occurs in parallel with the falls of other people. The married couple who sheltered him in childhood is constantly on the border of complete bankruptcy and hunger. Tragedy accompanies Copperfield’s life into adulthood when he becomes a clerk under the supervision of a cunning hook-maker Uriah Heep.
The symbolic image of water occupies an extremely important place in the novel – it is in the stormy sea that his elder friend and role model Steerforth dies. In the course of the development of the plot, the main character evolves from a child to a mature man who knows his desires and capabilities. Disappointment, the pain of loss and humility are necessary stages of personality development, according to Dickens, because only in this way the hero experiences real experiences that affect him and change his attitude to life forever. Dickens introduces the everyday hardships of ordinary people into his prose, giving his literature a special humanistic dimension. Not embellishing reality but giving a highly artistic but accurate description of it, he manages to make the lives of the most ordinary people vivid and memorable.
Comparative Analysis
The two novels we are considering have many common features in their structure. Despite the significant differences in social strata that Dickens and Austen describe, both writers use the social background as the basis for the implementation of a whole system of characters. Dickens’ characters correspond to the social situation in which they play their role. This is why vanity, greed, and cruelty govern the motivations of many of Dickens’s characters. The clearest example of such social vices in David Copperfield is the figure of Uriah Heap, who, through bureaucracy, deceives and leaves without means David’s aunt, Betsy Trotwood. The artistic universe of Austen, in comparison with Dickens, is devoid of such terrifying characters, but the book contains a place for psychological peripeteia, primarily related to the mental development of the main character.
From the way Emma treats Harriett Smith, an orphan under her patronage, one can learn a lot about her psychology and attitudes towards other people. Being a representative of the upper class, Emma is used to dividing people into classes and, depending on this, determine her attitude towards them. That is why Emma does not hesitate to dissuade Harriet from marrying the farmer Martin, based solely on the fact that his class is too low. Emma claims that she would not even communicate with Martin, pretending not to notice him.
This characterizes Emma as an arrogant person who puts the origin of a person above his personal qualities. Emma is oblivious to the fact that Harriet has sincere feelings for her fiancé. Her strong influence distorts Harriet’s personality, forcing her to choose the vicar Elton, refusing Martin. This results in the public humiliation of unhappy Harriett, with whom the vicar refuses to dance, knowing her feelings for him.
Only gradually does Emma begin to realize that other people’s feelings are just as important as hers. The main revelations for Emma are the sudden realizations of her own delusions. The heroine, who feels completely right, is repeatedly disappointed in her own many insights. However, this is how she gets the opportunity to improve, rise above her mistakes, become a better person. The book, despite the fact that it has a rather multi-layered plot, on the whole, can be perceived as a coming-of-age story. Emma is a heroine who, through trial and error, improves herself as a person. First, Emma learns to moderate her arrogance and prejudice towards other people. This is due to the fact that she realizes that she has no right to manipulate other lives, as she can not only not help but also harm people who receive her help.
In Emma, there are also characters who strive to be realized in the social hierarchy and, at the same time, are ready for meanness and dishonor. Vicar Elton, who immediately after the breakup of his marriage with Harriett, marries a rich and extremely grumpy woman, is just such a type of character. The artistic worlds of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens are united by their rootedness in the realities of English society, regardless of class. However, it is against the background of such peripeteia that the positive characteristics of the key characters of these novels are more clearly highlighted.
The life of David Copperfield, the hero of the novel of the same name by Charles Dickens, is very different from the English life of high society, which Jane Austen’s heroines enjoy. David grows up without a father, which immediately puts his development in a vulnerable social position. David’s life accompanies both the love of people close to him and deprivation and humiliation. Mr. Murdstone is the first embodiment of the oppressive and violent world order in the novel. Such heroes are not uncommon for the gallery of Dickens characters, they express the cruelty and heartlessness of the adult world in Dickens’s England. Submission and fear of punishment paint the hero’s childhood in peal tones. The hardships of life fall on David one after another – immediately after the death of his mother, he is deprived of the right to education. Murdstone sends him to work for a firm and wash bottles from labels.
A well-known fact of the biography of Dickens is that, at the request of his father, he earned money by cleaning bottles in his hungry childhood. Dickens’ novel reveals not only autobiographical elements but also a sincere understanding and empathic experience of the young hero’s burdens by the writer himself. The sentimental power of Dickens’ writing lies precisely in the ability to convey all the pain of injustice that his characters are forced to experience. Dickens’ books often focus on the social lower classes of the population of England, but this is the great emotional strength of the writer. Placing his heroes in a situation where both virtues and vices are sharply revived, Dickens awakens genuine feelings in the reader. The reality and perceptibility of Dickens’s characters are dictated by the unseen conditions in which they find themselves, conveyed in such a way as to cause resonance in the reader. This is the big difference between Dickens’s prose and Austen’s prose – Dickens’s knowledge of the lower social classes and the tragic conditions of their life gives him a deep artistic expression of high emotional impact.
Despite the fact that Dickens and Austen write thirty years apart and about different classes of the population, it makes sense to say that the novels turn out to be somewhat similar. First, both books present the story of the character formation of the protagonist. The novels concentrate on the biographies of their central characters – in fact, the heroes’ clash with real life forms their plotline. Having gone through the psychological tests of society, the heroes understand the world around them and themselves much more. Both David and Emma, at certain points in the plot, find themselves involved in an unhappy love relationship. Only at the end of their book-long journey, each of them understands the value of their real feelings and find a happy union with their intended soul mate. The ambiguity of many minor characters, for example, Frank Churchill in “Emma,” is needed in order to bring these characteristics closer to real ones. Austen is giving them not so much inconsistency as the ambiguity of nature that is essential for a living person.
Jane Austen’s characters prove to be inseparable from the moral and choice issues they face. By focusing on the topic of marriage, its happy and sad consequences, Austen forces the reader to reflect on the morality of his heroine’s actions. It is difficult to say which of the novels is more interesting or even realistic – both authors weave fascinating and complex plots, attracting vivid and memorable characters. In general, Dickens’s narrative can be called more emblematic – many of the heroes of his novel are a kind of allegories of snobbery and avarice, kindness and caring. “Emma” avoids such a categorization of characters, forcing the main character herself to doubt the authenticity of the emotions of certain characters, conveying this feeling to the reader. But the power of David Copperfield’s opening chapters, which depicts a boy’s childhood full of hardships and little fragmentary joys, can be said to have such literary power that it makes the novel surpass Austen’s work.
References
Austen, Jane. Emma. Web.
Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. Web.